I don't have a problem with blocking users from deleting the stock apps, as you point out near the beginning of the article. I get Apple's argument here: idiots would delete them and have to restore to get them back (or not know how to get them back at all). But there is no legitimate reason for not being able to set 3rd-party apps as default for certain actions (e.g. which camera app opens from the lock screen, which browser opens web links, etc.) This is a solved problem - Android has supported this since day one in a very simple, mobile-friendly way, and both Windows and even OS X have supported setting default applications for years.

I never had a problem with Apple's built-in client but after waiting for an invite for Mailbox, I'm never going back. Mailbox makes checking my email fun, if you can believe it. Swipe right to archive, long-swipe to delete, and swipe left to read it later. Got a bunch of spam? Scroll to the bottom and long swipe it away. It's so easy.

TweetBot

Twitter isn't technically a "default" app but it's riddled with ads and an interface that doesn't come close to touching the sturdiness of TweetBot. Add in a mute feature and last picture taken and it's the best Twitter app.

Here's the thing - I find a lot of Apple default apps - Calendar, Weather, Clock - do their job well. Apple is known for simplicity and omitted extra clutter, and for these apps, their philosophy works well. Weather tells you what the weather will be where you are. Clock is a clock, with some well done alarm/timer functions. Calendar is a calendar. Even the latest iteration of Apple Maps - its simpler, has nicer tiles, and is more performant than the Google Maps app on my iPhone 4.

Maybe certain things could use a few tweaks, but I don't think Apple should stray from this philosophy. A lot of the apps in this article have very nice features that power users will love, but a lot of them are noticeably more cluttered and complicated compared with the Apple apps.

KISS, apple, and let the power users find their own replacements in the App store.

I don't have a problem with blocking users from deleting the stock apps, as you point out near the beginning of the article. I get Apple's argument here: idiots would delete them and have to restore to get them back (or not know how to get them back at all). But there is no legitimate reason for not being able to set 3rd-party apps as default for certain actions (e.g. which camera app opens from the lock screen, which browser opens web links, etc.) This is a solved problem - Android has supported this since day one in a very simple, mobile-friendly way, and both Windows and even OS X have supported setting default applications for years.

It's because of money. Apple wants your data to use for iAds and maps. They don't want you to give it to Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. Not using the defaults also will take away from the "experience" Apple worked so hard to give you on their devices.

I don't have a problem with blocking users from deleting the stock apps, as you point out near the beginning of the article. I get Apple's argument here: idiots would delete them and have to restore to get them back (or not know how to get them back at all). But there is no legitimate reason for not being able to set 3rd-party apps as default for certain actions (e.g. which camera app opens from the lock screen, which browser opens web links, etc.) This is a solved problem - Android has supported this since day one in a very simple, mobile-friendly way, and both Windows and even OS X have supported setting default applications for years.

It's because of money. Apple wants your data to use for iAds and maps. They don't want you to give it to Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. Not using the defaults also will take away from the "experience" Apple worked so hard to give you on their devices.

No default Apple app uses iAds, and they have plenty of data for maps. Put that argument back in the oven.

It's always fascinated me how much iOS users seek replacement email and calendar apps. Goes to show Apple needs to put a lot more thought into them.

I think more than that it shows that choice is vritually always a good thing because the default isn't going to please everyone. iOS needs something akin to Android "intents". Currently Apple gets to decide what does what on their OS. It'd be nice to have a choice or even more "share" options.

It's always fascinated me how much iOS users seek replacement email and calendar apps. Goes to show Apple needs to put a lot more thought into them.

I haven't seen any hard data, but I'd be very surprise of more than 10% of users use an alternate email client on iOS. Obviously no default app will meet everyone's needs, but mail isn't a major problem for the platform.

I've been looking to find a replacement for Music. When listening to my music collection, if I want to listen to everything by a single artist, there are really only ever two scenarios: shuffle, and by album by track (chronological, in track order.) The iPad Music app gets this right. I actually had an iPad before I got an iPhone, so you can imagine my disappointment the first time I fired up the Music app on my phone with a library full of songs.

In what bizarre universe would I ever want to listen to my songs in alphabetical order? If I wanted to listen to my music out of order, I'd... I dunno... put it on shuffle.

Oh, I could go through and edit all of the Sort tags in iTunes. That would certainly be one way to do it. But why should I have to spend so much of my time when the phone is more than powerful enough to re-sort the display list any way I want, if the app was just designed to do it?!

Anyone know of a replacement Music app that does everything the default app does, but allows you to sort the playlist the way you want it?

Weather Underground has a great weather app.. very detailed and easy to use. I also love it because it taps in to their fantastic crowd sourced weather station network so you have near rear time temperature data that is neighborhood relevant, a must have if you live somewhere that can see a lot of variability in the local weather.

The first is Cortex Cam which is only usable for still photography and takes a few seconds of video and then renders a photo that loses all the noise in low light shots. It's quite remarkable and produces stunning shots.

The second is Photogene, a surprisingly powerful editing tool with an infinite undo mechanism that allows you to do all the standard photo editing stuff plus add captions to your photos.

...but I'd be very surprise of more than 10% of users use an alternate email client on iOS...

That could easily be attributed to the lack of integration of 3rd party solutions. One glaring short coming with iOS Mail and even OS X Mail is Apple ignoring IMAP folder subscriptions, for whatever reason. Not really a big deal until you connect a company IMAP account with a retention policy of 5 years. On iOS you get to scroll through all those folders every time you pull up the folder list and in OS X Mail you get five years of email cached on your computer.

For car navigation I use Waze. It's a traffic-oriented GPS that supports user reports (police, potholes, accidents, etc.). I've been using it for over a year now and it's fantastic.

I stick with the regular camera most of the time but for panoramas I use 360Panorama (app seems to just be called 360). It automatically takes shots to fill in gaps as you pan around in a full 360 degree arc (if you wish) and then stitches them all together automatically. When you view it back on your phone there are two modes, swiping around the photo or "looking around" by moving your phone to pan around the scene. In either case it offers an incredibly immersive experience that makes for some wonderful memories of places.

Lastly, I have the mobile versions of Keynote and Numbers. Keynote hasn't proven that useful to me yet (although I love it on OS X), but I have been making regular use of Numbers. The iCloud sync is wonderful, and I now use it to keep a log of things like vehicle maintenance and tracking my fuel efficiency.

One app that I use to replace the standard iPhone apps on my phone is Sparrow, a French-made e-mail client acquired by Google last year. What makes it so great? Primarily, the presence of a “Send and Archive” button, which means I can respond and clear my inbox in a push. It’s nice to see a feature that should be obvious actually be there. Plus I can easily swipe over and get a choice of reply, star, tag, archive, or delete all in a single window rather than deal with Mail’s multiple choices using multiple gestures or buttons. (Sadly, Sparrow doesn’t yet work with Exchange so I can’t read my Ars e-mail on it—although I’d love to try Mailbox!) —Cyrus Farivar

I think this whole thing needs to have some big, bold letters stating:

I don't mind that it's recommended or even cited on an alternate list, but it should be clearly stated that the app will no longer receive feature updates. The final parenthetical clause alludes to this, but the inclusion of "yet" makes it seem as though it's on the horizon.

EDIT: Changed my warning as it alluded to the incorrect thing -- it receives critical updates but not features.

My all time favorite app now: nPlayer. It knocks out the default video player Apple put into iOS.

nPlayer is like VLC but for iOS. It plays pretty much anything including Dolby audio codec (AC3, E-AC3) which most players don't on iOS. Just last night I used it to play an old family video I made into a .wmv file a long time ago. I also use it to stream from my NAS that has DLNA with ease on the iPhone 5. It has a simple little web server so you can upload videos directly into your iPhone or iPad.

Check it out. It blows all the other video players in the play store out of the water. Best $3 I ever spent.

more than needing to find alternatives, my OCD nature for creating order on my phone requires me to delete the 17+ native apps that i've never even launched (and never will). phone, sms, and safari are used daily. notes, voice and reminders are used once or twice a month. the rest are cruft.

forget deleting them.... let me just remove the icon.

hypothetically, if i ever press a button that requires one of them to launch iOS can just launch the app for me. i don't need an icon on my home screen for this to work.

it's slightly ironic that a company know for it's minimalism won't let this happen. there's no need to force me to create multiple folders for all the crApple, and those folders then remind me daily of the itch that i can't scratch....

Is part of the article missing? The image for the article specifically focussed on Tweetbot, suggesting that Twitter clients will be included, but no sign of them. Is it just a misleading image or has part of the article gone missing?

Does 3 day weather forecasting, alarm clock, and you can see the planet earth as a liveish view with current/forecast clouds, tempreture, humidity or wind overlaid on it. The weather seems to be consistently more accurate than the met office or apple weather.

I don't have a problem with blocking users from deleting the stock apps, as you point out near the beginning of the article. I get Apple's argument here: idiots would delete them and have to restore to get them back (or not know how to get them back at all). But there is no legitimate reason for not being able to set 3rd-party apps as default for certain actions (e.g. which camera app opens from the lock screen, which browser opens web links, etc.) This is a solved problem - Android has supported this since day one in a very simple, mobile-friendly way, and both Windows and even OS X have supported setting default applications for years.

Apple Users pay a premium for the complete user experience. There is a built-in expectation of a seemless synergy between software and hardware -- ie. the Apple experience. If users are allowed to easily delete default Apps, that defeats the purpose of owning and using an Apple device. Like it or loath it, Apple knows their customers needs. Would BB allow their users to delete its default mail apps? I think not. There is always jailbreak for those who want it.

It's always fascinated me how much iOS users seek replacement email and calendar apps. Goes to show Apple needs to put a lot more thought into them.

I haven't seen any hard data, but I'd be very surprise of more than 10% of users use an alternate email client on iOS. Obviously no default app will meet everyone's needs, but mail isn't a major problem for the platform.

The email app in iOS has always been fine for me. But then, I'm not a power email user. If I were getting hundreds of emails a day, and many of them were really important, I might have a different opinion.

Apple Users pay a premium for the complete user experience. There is a built-in expectation of a seemless synergy between software and hardware -- ie. the Apple experience. If users are allowed to easily delete default Apps, that defeats the purpose of owning and using an Apple device. Like it or loath it, Apple knows their customers needs. Would BB allow their users to delete its default mail apps? I think not. There is always jailbreak for those who want it.

I agree that iOS users expect a seamless experience, and hardware/software synergy. However, the very fact that the App Store allows apps which (in some categories) wholly or partly replicate the functionality of the stock apps negates the rest of your point. As does every suggestion in this article.

The very fact that millions of people download their own camera apps, or maps apps, or email apps - that suit their needs better than stock - is part of the beauty of the whole iOS ecosystem. But that you can't have your chosen, preferred camera app invoked when you use the lock screen shortcut, etc, is just ugly.

The stock apps should be a good average, which suit most users (which they are), but there is no harm whatsoever in letting other apps replace them, or allowing the user to hide stock apps. It can only make iOS better.

My pet hate is the stocks app. I own no stocks, and it's absolutely, 100% useless for me.

I replaced the awful Podcast app (without my knowledge or approval it used 500mb of cellular data in 2 days dowoading back-catalogues, and pressing a button took 10 secs to respond) with the magnificent Downcast, and have never looked back.

Also, a note about Alarm Clock Pro and other LED-lookalike alarm clock apps.To emulate the LED look these apps universally add a 'haze' or glow around the digits.But to us glasses wearers that makes the digits unreadable, as my own bad-vision-induced haze (I don't sleep in my glasses!) adds to the app-induced haze, and the combined effect is too much.

Why can't we have an option in these apps for crisp, clear digits with no haze?Style over function?Grrrrrrr.......

But there is no legitimate reason for not being able to set 3rd-party apps as default for certain actions (e.g. which camera app opens from the lock screen, which browser opens web links, etc.) This is a solved problem - Android has supported this since day one in a very simple, mobile-friendly way, and both Windows and even OS X have supported setting default applications for years.

Android doesn't have full disk encryption that makes it impossible for any "normal" app to run from the lock screen.

Apple had to jump through various hoops, and make various compromises, to allow the camera app to run before the user has punched in their pin code. There is no way that is ever going to work with third party apps.

I replaced the awful Podcast app (without my knowledge or approval it used 500gb of data in 2 days dowoading back-catalogues, and pressing a button took 10 secs to respond) with the magnificent Downcast, and have never looked back.

500GB? Surely not. Last time I checked, there are no iOS devices available with a 500GB of flash memory.

Also, you might want to take a look at the latest version. It's better than any third party podcast apps I have purchased.

Apple Users pay a premium for the complete user experience. There is a built-in expectation of a seemless synergy between software and hardware -- ie. the Apple experience. If users are allowed to easily delete default Apps, that defeats the purpose of owning and using an Apple device. Like it or loath it, Apple knows their customers needs. Would BB allow their users to delete its default mail apps? I think not. There is always jailbreak for those who want it.

Bull.

And there is not "always a jailbreak." Apple goes to very considerable lengths to block jailbreaking, and more often than not now there isn't a jailbreak available - jailbreaking iOS6 took some months, and there isn't a jailbreak for 6.13 which makes it impossible for jailbroken users to restore their phone or get a warranty repair without losing everything.

If there was a Gatekeeper-esque "give me control of my userland" switch then you'd have a point, but there's not, so you don't.